childhood foods

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Mom’s Potato Salad

I mentioned my mom’s potato salad recently, and I was delighted that some of you were curious about the recipe. 

When I went to my parents’ new home for July Fourth, my mother sent me home with a) a HUGE hunk of ham, b) cookies, and c) – MOST IMPORTANT – a big container of potato salad. 

I managed to make the potato salad last for three additional days, by eating it only for breakfast (except for one day, when I also ate it for lunch) (and then there were a few sneaky spoonsful at odd intervals). Drawing it out for so long required MUCH restraint. 

When I found the recipe – in my mother’s own handwriting, so: extra precious – I learned with shock that there is MAYONNAISE in this recipe!!!! I do not care for mayonnaise, and this is certainly not a “mayonnaisey” potato salad. It is a mustardy potato salad. But… apparently there is some mayonnaise in it as well. 

Note that my mother references the hard boiled eggs (which I abhor) and appeals to my potato salad sensibilities to override my dislike and add them anyway. I have never tried the salad without the hard boiled egg, so I can’t say for sure it’s truly that important. But I will say that, when very finely chopped, the egg sort of disappears into the background.

This recipe is highly flexible. I don’t recall ever having green pepper in it (though that would be a delicious addition). Sometimes there are pimientos, sometimes not. Sometimes there is celery, sometimes not. The key is in the FLAVOR, not so much the ingredients.

One highly critical element of this recipe is the dried mustard. It gives a special zing to the potato salad that you can’t get with jarred mustard alone.

BUT: The magic of this recipe is in the pickles, I think. Or, in the secret ingredient, which is pickle juice (NEVER vinegar, even though the recipe supposedly calls for vinegar), drizzled out in small amounts until the salad tastes as it should. (NOTE: This is not a pickly salad. But the pickles are CRUCIAL.) 

Salt is also extremely important, and this recipe may require some salt tinkering. I think different potatoes have different levels of starchiness (even among the Idaho varietal of potato, which is called for in this recipe because of its crumbly texture), and so the salt gets absorbed differently with each batch. 

Do make sure that you do MULTIPLE taste tests, to ensure proper salt/pickle level. 

Delicious as a side, but also for breakfast.

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Dinners This Week

It’s a holiday week and I had the best gift today – the gift of time with my husband. My daughter had camp, so he and I ate breakfast together, went out to lunch, and spent the afternoon enjoying one another’s company before picking Carla up. (And she gets the biggest kick out of having her dad pick her up from camp – or school. It’s adorable.) We almost never have time just the two of us, so it has been really nice. And tomorrow, no camp! 

I am not a big fan of July Fourth. The fireworks started in my neighborhood a few weeks ago, and keep my daughter awake. (Partly because they are loud, partly because she is worrying about the neighbor’s dog, who hates fireworks.) Plus, the weather has been AWFUL here lately. At least the wildfire smoke seems to have bypassed us for now, but it’s hot and humid with thunderstorms rolling in almost daily. No thank you.

But the holiday will be over tomorrow, and hopefully that means fireworks season will be done… in a few weeks.

Dinners for Week of July 3 – 10

  • Hamburgers & Hot Dogs: We are having our favorite Fourth of July foods tonight! The weather is crummy though, so I think we’ll make the burgers in the instant pot instead of on the grill. (I am not eating a hot dog this year, so my husband is on his own for cooking his.) Because my basil plant is flourishing, I am making my favorite chickpea salad to go alongside my burger, and look forward to eating leftovers for lunches this week. We are also having sliced strawberries with mascarpone cheese for dessert. Yum!
  • Ham & Potato Salad: We are having dinner with my parents tomorrow! I am just so delighted that this is an option! Growing up, my mom always made the same foods for specific holidays, and ham and potato salad were our July Fourth fare. Have I raved about my mother’s potato salad on this blog before? It is a mustard-based potato salad, but I think it’s the best. The potatoes are so tender. There are tiny chunks of pickle throughout. The sauce/dressing is just the tiniest bit spicy. It’s one of my favorite foods. It is especially delicious for breakfast, and she makes an enormous vat of it because she knows I’ll have a bowl for breakfast as long as it lasts. War practically breaks out when my brother and I are both in the vicinity of the potato salad at the same time, because we feel we have equal claim. (We don’t; I have greater claim because I am the oldest.) My mom has been making it for me pretty much every time I’ve gone to visit her since I left home at age eighteen, and I never get tired of it. Last time I visited my parents’ house, during our epic Road Trip!, she made potato salad and then sent me home with a to-go container. This is all to say: I am excited for my mom’s potato salad tomorrow. I can take or leave ham. But the potato salad! 
It’s not much to look at it, but it is beautiful.
  • Sheet Pan Cuban Chicken: I am sure I will be in the mood for something spicy after eating all this rich creamy food, so sheet pan Cuban chicken it is!
  • Veggie Stir Fry: Let’s round out the week with a veggie packed stir fry. I am all about the zucchini and broccoli right now. YUM.

Do you have a favorite childhood food that you still eat as an adult?